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Comment by matte_black | Hacker News Reader

I once wanted to make a custom PCB for my mechanical keyboard layout. I was so frustrated and disheartened by how difficult it was and all the pitfalls that could occur I decided to just stick to hand wiring.

I’d love to be able to just hire someone to make me a custom PCB the way someone would hire a developer to write an app, but unfortunately it seems there is no market for this.

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You just need to find the right community. I'd start with forum.eevblog.com and see if someone is interested in the freelance work. If you want the full design and by-hand prototyping, it's a fair bit more work than you might think (so $$$), especially if you're used to getting moderately complex mass produced electronics for $50. Add two zeroes.

Then, if you want a change, it's pretty near that same full amount of effort/cost again for the second assembled prototype.

Have a look at this custom keyboard PCB tutorial perhaps and see if you want to tackle all or part of it yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13406772

I've also got a friend who does that as part of his company's offerings. Not sure how busy he is or if he wants to do a small one-off (he mostly serves product and engineering companies), but you could have a look at: https://www.ciholas.com/ourservices/ (I have no financial interest and he's a good acquaintance or distant friend, so use him or not; I don't care... :) )

I've seen scripts that can take a keyboard layout from http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/ and turn it into a PCB, how realistic is it to get a working PCB generated by code?

For a constrained problem like that, it's certainly possible for someone to have fully automated the PCB design. (I think it's unlikely to be commercially viable to create that automation, but there's a lot of excellent hobbyist work out there.)

There's still a time-intensive series of steps for one-off production from "finished PCB gerbers" to "finished PCB with all components installed, all mechanical holes in exactly the right place, microcontroller firmware written and programmed, and the whole thing tested".

If the scripts exist, there's probably forum discussions about people's experiences trying that path.

I know at least one example where someone made something like this before (http://kalerator.clueboard.co/), but I have no idea if what I'm looking at is viable or how to evaluate it.

I would love a solution where I could simply have a PCB made based on parameters but I guess it's not happening any time soon. Still requires specialized knowledge.

I poked around some web searching, and it seems viable. From what I read, it does schematic and layout, using Eagle (which means you need the paid version of Eagle if your board is over 10cm in either direction). It doesn't do column wiring [based on a web post, not first-hand experience], but it gets close enough that you could probably finish by hand or with help on a forum or reddit. There were a few posts where people proposed porting it to produce KiCAD or other EDA tool output, but I didn't readily find any "I'm finished; here it is" posts along those development lines.

You still need to buy the parts and solder everything up, but for one-off, that's mostly a bit tedium, so this seems doable if you're somewhat dedicated and the type to find a way around or over small obstacles. The microcontroller and firmware for something constrained like this is almost assuredly a solved problem, so I wouldn't worry much about that [though it's something you need to chase down, of course].

But you're right, there's still enough specialized knowledge that there's no real "thingiverse equivalent" (of similar community size) for PCBs.

There is market for sure for this. The question is if you are ready pay the price. I assume, you need huge size 2 layer pcb with components on one side only with wide tracks. Aligning all these buttons would take a day (5 minutes*105). It would take another day to create footprints and prepare components. Another half day to sort things with MCU and at least half day for communication overhead with client. And a day of communication with different pcb manufacturers/assembly houses. A week for a very simple project. If something is not clear with MCU, add second week. Hardware cycles are very different than software. One can write plenty of code in 2 weeks and ship it. In hardware world 2 weeks is a short warm-up phase.

> Aligning all these buttons would take a day (5 minutes*105).

Surely you could have a group of switches together and copy/paste?

There is a market of freelancers who do this, but the cost is probably not what you are expecting from the software market.

I have a small prototype I need to get from a schematic stage (needs additional checking & decoupling caps, etc added) to a few PCBs - I was thinking of hiring someone to do the PCB layout. forum.eevblog.com was mentioned above, there are hardware designers on upwork - anywhere else I should look?

I do this - my email is in my profile, or poke me on IRC and we'll talk.

Same - I still do it from time to time. The EEVBlog forums have ended up as the main discussion area for professionals and small-time operators/hobbyists.

Do realize that keyboard-sized PCBs will be expensive in single quantities past the design stage as well.

What is the cost?

If you need only small number of simplest type 1-2 sided PCB's you can just use CNC milling machine to carve the layout and drill the holes.

Why? You code get 10 higher quality boards for $20 from China.

Cause its annoying to wait 4 weeks each time to find out what you did wrong...

You can get boards in a week if you pay a little extra for shipping via a courier. Even by regular mail, you're more likely to wait two weeks than four. It's difficult to imagine circumstances where 'just' using a CNC machine would be a more practical option.

Yes, a week delivered is doable for 50-ish USD. But it still takes 2 weeks for 2 revisions. With a CNC I can do 2 revisions in 3 days, incl 1 day waiting for parts.

What's your setup for doing this? You need quite a bit more than just a CNC to make PCBs. Making even a basic two-sided board with vias and soldermask is a pretty complex process. If you can get by with a single-sided board with no soldermask, then you can probably get by without using a PCB at all, at the prototyping stage.

if you want to get dirty with pcb making for mechanical keyboards, there's the #kb-design channel on /r/mechanicalkeyboard's discord for you to ask around. start here to learn a bit more: https://kbwiki.ai03.me/

Hey! I do this kind of thing, and there definitely is a market for it.

Do you have good mechanical drawings of the housing and switches?

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